April's CR Diary

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July 29, 2005

The Feast for the First Night of the Orange One In His New Home

You remember the infinite loop in which I fax the cashed check from my bank to Cingular Wireless, they deny ever receiving it, they tell me to fax it again, rinse, repeat, right? And the bizarre situation with the water company where I have to prove that I live here by having two months worth of utility bills that I can't get because I can't prove that I live here until I have two months of utility bills? Yesterday when I tried to book a plane ticket to go to MR's dad's wedding, Air Canada told me that based on my country of residence, I could not have a billing address in the US. Huh? Am I supposed to have a Swiss bank account? Well, it gets worse.

MR is on hold with the airline that shipped his stuff trying to figure out how to get it out of air cargo while I am sitting in dim light because Comcast Cable, our internet service provider, somehow knocked out the power to most of our house while attempting to install our internet. They said they'd send an electrician right out, but they haven't, and when I called the rep told me to get an electrician and just send them the bill. No way, said I, and proceeded to insist insistently that they send someone out to bring back our power. The scary part is that the fridge, with over $100 worth of fresh CR food, is in the power outage part of the house. Oh, and so are both air-conditioners and the ENTIRE upstairs. And the kitchen (thank Goddess we have a gas stove) and the dining room. At this rate, we will be cooking, eating, and doing dishes by candlelight. How romantic.

Utilities aside, we are having a wonderful time. MR's flight was even more delayed last night, so we didn't get home till after eight. I threw together a variation on the originally planned dinner, and I'd have to say it came out well. Here it is:

Food List : MR dinner7-28-05.fls
DATE : 07/28/05
Num. Foods : 9
Food #1 : Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, June thru October average 100 g
Food #2 : Basil, fresh 5 g
Food #3 : Garlic, raw 4 g
Food #4 : Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, red 3 oz drinking, 3 oz cooking
Food #5 : Oil 1 teaspoon olive, 1 teaspoon flax, 1 teaspoon hazelnut
Food #6 : Egg, white, raw, fresh 310 g
Food #7 : Blueberries, raw 112 g
Food #8 : Olives, ripe, canned (jumbo-super colossal) 44 g
Food #9 : Cottage Cheese Lowfat Light and Lively 1 cup

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 625.17__cal 31%
Protein 45.08__gm 82% RDA
Total Fat 23.87__gm 37%
Sat. Fat 8.63__gm 43%
Mono. Fat 8.03__gm 28%
Poly. Fat 5.45__gm 82%
Carbohydrate 40.27__gm 13%
Fiber 7.95__gm 27%
Cholesterol 89.31__mg 30%
Vit. A 2611.34__IU 52% RDA
Vit. B6 0.39__mg 25% RDA
Vit. B12 0.63__mcg 32% RDA
Vit. C 97.27__mg 162% RDA
Vit. E 4.37__mg 55% RDA
Thiamine 0.27__mg 24% RDA
Folacin 71.21__mcg 40% RDA
Riboflavin 1.65__mg 127% RDA
Niacin 2.83__mg 19% RDA
Panto. Acid 1.32__mg 26% SA
Calcium 363.20__mg 30% RDA
Copper 0.48__mg 24% SA
Iron 4.04__mg 27% RDA
Magnesium 100.13__mg 36% RDA
Manganese 1.60__mg 53% SA
Phosphorus 355.02__mg 30% RDA
Potassium 1447.23__mg 72% RDA
Selenium 58.12__mcg 106% RDA
Sodium 983.85__mg 41% SA
Zinc 0.76__mg 6% RDA
Tyrosine 2.43__gm 253% RDA
Lysine 5.04__gm 701% RDA
Phenylalanine 3.29__gm 343% RDA
Leucine 5.49__gm 572% RDA
Valine 3.78__gm 450% RDA
Methionine 1.99__gm 664% RDA
Cystine 1.26__gm 419% RDA
Tryptophan 0.81__gm 448% RDA
Threonine 3.00__gm 626% RDA
Isoleucine 3.41__gm 473% RDA

I microwaved the eggwhites and chopped them into little pieces. Then I simmered diced garlic in 3 oz red wine, then added the tomatoes and the olives, followed by basil, olive and flax oil at the end. I served the tomato mixture on the eggwhites, as though the eggwhites were pasta. Then I served blueberries with hazelnut oil on the side. It all came together very quickly, with MR's assistance, and we had a beautiful candlelight dinner. Not quite as fancy as I had intended, but still pretty delicious.

Today I made eggwhite gazpacho for lunch, along with more blueberries with hazelnut oil and an extra teaspoon of hazelnut oil for MR's lunchtime megamuffin. Here 'tis:

Food List : gazpachzo eggwhite.fls
DATE : 04/23/05
Num. Foods : 9
Food #1 : Vegetable juice cocktail, canned
Food #2 : Peppers, sweet, green, raw 100 g
Food #3 : Tomatoes, red, ripe, raw, November thru May average 100 g
Food #4 : Egg, white, raw, fresh 280 g
Food #5 : Lime juice, raw juice of half a lime
Food #6 : Cucumber, with peel, raw 301 g
Food #7 : Oil t teaspoon olive, 2 hazelnut
Food #8 : Blueberries, raw 89.3 g

NUTRIENT TOTALS:

Abs. Values %RDA/SA

Calories 495.43__cal 25%
Protein 35.62__gm 65% RDA
Total Fat 19.25__gm 30%
Sat. Fat 4.94__gm 25%
Mono. Fat 6.67__gm 23%
Poly. Fat 5.68__gm 85%
Carbohydrate 49.86__gm 17%
Fiber 9.88__gm 33%
Cholesterol 96.76__mg 32%
Vit. A 13789.62__IU 276% RDA
Vit. B6 0.86__mg 54% RDA
Vit. B12 0.56__mcg 28% RDA
Vit. C 207.83__mg 346% RDA
Vit. E 4.10__mg 51% RDA
Thiamine 0.37__mg 34% RDA
Folacin 146.27__mcg 81% RDA
Riboflavin 1.53__mg 118% RDA
Niacin 4.24__mg 28% RDA
Panto. Acid 2.00__mg 40% SA
Calcium 109.40__mg 9% RDA
Copper 0.82__mg 41% SA
Iron 2.99__mg 20% RDA
Magnesium 119.27__mg 43% RDA
Manganese 0.97__mg 32% SA
Phosphorus 193.83__mg 16% RDA
Potassium 1838.40__mg 92% RDA
Selenium 51.81__mcg 94% RDA
Sodium 1156.98__mg 48% SA
Zinc 1.46__mg 12% RDA
Tyrosine 1.35__gm 141% RDA
Lysine 2.28__gm 316% RDA
Phenylalanine 2.02__gm 210% RDA
Leucine 2.96__gm 308% RDA
Valine 2.24__gm 267% RDA
Methionine 1.09__gm 364% RDA
Cystine 0.85__gm 284% RDA
Tryptophan 0.43__gm 239% RDA
Threonine 1.60__gm 333% RDA
Isoleucine 1.95__gm 271% RDA

P:C:F = 29:36:35

Microwave the eggwhites and cut into bite sized pieces. Marinate in vegetable juice with olive oil, a dash of tabasco, lime juice and a dash of balsamic vinegar in the fridge until chilled. In a food processor, blend cucumber and green pepper until coarse. Blend into eggwhite mixture and add tomatoes, diced. Serve cold.

Yikes! As I transferred the recipe from DWIDP I realized that I shorted MR a teaspoon of oil! Oh no! He might waste away to nothing! I put a teaspoon in the soup, then a teaspoon on his megamuffin and one on the blueberries, but the DWIDP called for 160 calories of oil, not 120. Uh-oh. He's looking thinner already. Don't worry, MoMR, I'll get another 40 calories into him asap.

Posted by april at 3:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 28, 2005

Ongoing Drama

So MR's flight is delayed. That, you would think, would give me ample opportunity to deal with the dead scale issues. Wrong.

I was already on my way to Conshohocken, where I used to live and still work, to do some errands when MR's mom called to let me know that MR would be two hours late. Unfortunately, I had planned my day to be in Conshohocken, which is much closer to the airport, and then just jump on the road to pick up the Orange One. I was attacked by a work crisis that required my attention, then I tried to pick up scale batteries at a jewelery store only to find that they had one, not two, of the batteries I need. I bought one and another that they said might work. Unfortunately, if I were to go home now and attempt to use the batteries in the scale(s) I would have to turn around and come back the second I got home. So I've popped into my office to check MR's flight status (another twenty minutes delayed... he must be freaking out by now! I hope he is sleeping or reading some fascinating paper about aging) and wanted to give you a quick update.

Alas, tonight's dinner, instead of the fascinating stuffed mushrooms with cottage cheese made to taste like ricotta covered with fresh summer tomato and garlic and wine homemade marinara will probably not be happening. Instead, I have in mind to throw some Quorn tenders together with some Trader Joe's marinara and flax oil, then serve with some gorgeous tall skinny asparagi that I picked up at Whole Foods while doing the MR-mega shop this morning (that man eats more vegetables than you can imagine) with some EVOO (that's Extra Virgin Olive Oil, for those of you who are having a moment of acute confusion) and fresh lemon. That will take all of ten minutes to prepare, and will still be delicious. I'll do my fancy dinner tomorrow night, and then the eggwhite fritatta on Sunday. The exciting thing is that I have a very long lifetime of cooking for this man to plan, so if one dinner doesn't happen as anticipated, I can just do it another night.

And that, my dear bloggiefriends, is something I am *very* happy about.

Posted by april at 5:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Now This Is A Crisis

You guys aren't going to believe what happened.

Both of my scales are totally disfunctional. Either something happened in the move, or the batteries are dead, or something, but they're both toast.

So I went to the drugstore to buy batteries, even brought the old batteries with me to show the employees and make sure I was purchasing the right replacements. Then I got the batteries home and they're the wrong size. And now I don't have time to run back to the drugstore because time is running out before I pick up my Orange One at the airport!

With anyone else coming for dinner, this would be a non-issue. With MR, there is no guestimating.

The good news is that I had already modified my planned dinner for tonight to make it easier and quicker to prepare. So it won't be a disaster that I can't make it in advance, since I can just put it together using MR's scale. The bad news is that I can now no longer make tomorrow's lunch (eggwhite gazpachzo) in advance, so I'll have to spend part of the morning preparing lunch. We'll just be hanging out in the house waiting for the cable people to come install our internet connection so I guess that will be fine.

Tonight's dinner must showcase my ability to make delicious 625 calorie meals without compromising on the Zone, and without resorting to seafood or meat. Or excessive Quorn. I am probably going to do summer tomato pasta sauce over eggwhites with some asparagus on the side, but I might change my mind. Tomorrow night I'm going to do my eggwhite fritatta with roasted peppers and mushrooms, with brussels sprouts and broccoli on the side. We shall see... I never promise dishes in advance... remind me to tell you about the time I was tempted to fake my own death to avoid making a peanut butter pie.

Laura: thermos. I'll get MR to tell me what kind.

MoMR and Fruitgirl: I love purple. MR would not look good in hot pink. Pale pink, perhaps, but not vibrant shouting shocking pink.

Aubrey de Grey, on the other hand, might look fab.

Posted by april at 12:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 26, 2005

Another Advantage to Being Thin

There are many advantages to being thin, but often, when you live with someone twice your size who wants to eat you for breakfast, you forget. My darling little calico, Philomena, has been in this predicament for quite sometime, and we've grown accustomed to a situation in which the two cats remain separated for Philo's safety. I have often said that I have more hope for peace in the Middle East than for domestic tranquility between my cats.

So when I got the new house, I immediately sought a way to maximize Philo's roaming space while keeping her safe from Kieffer, the giant murderous tabby who is charming with humans but detests cats. I put up a baby gate in the upstairs hall that is high enough that Kieffer can't get over it.

Last night I introduced Philomena to her new space, leaving Kieffer at the old apartment till tonight. Philo looked around the upstairs, sniffed about, saw the babygate, then saw the railing next to the stairs, and hopped right through it! She's so tiny that she can slip through the stair rails with no problem at all, and roam the house as she pleases. Kieffer, on the other hand, being both a large framed cat and a bit heavy on top of that, will definitely not be able to get through the railing. So there's another advantage to being thin: easy escape from your nineteen pound tabby arch-nemesis!

I was so busy making runs back and forth to the new house with stuff from the old apartment that I practically forgot to eat dinner. Once I finally got settled into the new place with Philo it was close to ten, and both she and I were feeling a bit hungry, so we split a can of tuna fish. I had mine with hot dog relish, she prefers hers straight up, extra juice. I know I've been eating too much meat lately, but soon enough MR will be here and I'll never eat anything bad again for the rest of my life, so I'm not all that worried about it.

This morning I took a shower in the new place for the first time... Philomena gets really freaked out when people shower, I suppose because she can't figure out what on earth would possess someone who is otherwise apparently sane to cover him or herself with water. She meowed and tried to rescue me by almost jumping in, but I kept up a steady stream of "You're okay, I'm okay, we're all okay," in a calm tone and she settled down on the bathmat. I intentionally moved the cats in a few days before the Orange One's arrival so that we could iron out these little details in advance. He might find it disconcerting to have a seven pound calico cat attempt to save him from the shower.

Meanwhile, I am making preparations for the August 7th birthday/housewarming/fundraising party. On the menu: megamuffins, pasta-less lasagna, and tons of fruits and vegetables. If MR will let us, we might break out the Vitamix and make whey protein shakes. And of course, red wine, and in honor of Aubrey de Grey, lots of beer. I am excited. CR and Mprize folk are coming in from as far away as Rochester, New York and northern Virginia. We might even get one from Louisiana...

Posted by april at 6:58 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

July 25, 2005

We Can Not Put Our Men In Frilly Pink Palaces!

I heard that line on a decorator show once while I was trapped in a hotel room with someone who wanted to watch TV, and it must have stuck in my head because when I saw that the room in our new home that is ideal for MR's office was hot pink, I knew I had to do something. There was no way that MR could accomplish the Great Work (writing the book, that is) in a room with hot pink walls. So my mother and I have been painting.

The good news is that MR's office walls are no longer hot pink -- rather, they are a very unoffensive shade of white. The two windows let in nice hazy sunshine through the giant trees outside in the backyard that should provide a pleasant backdrop as he writes. The bad news is that we're not quite done with the baseboards and the wood frames on the doors, but I hope to get those done tonight. The other bad news is that I can't figure out how to paint the radiator without causing a fire the first time the heat comes on in the winter, so MR may just have a giant hot pink radiator in his office. I hope that doesn't seriously delay the dawn of radical anti-aging biomedicine.

We also painted our bedroom, and I'd have to say that it looks pretty good. I am pleased with the soft white cloud-like effect that is created by three layers of white primer and paint on top of a very bright sky blue original color.

My mother and I have been eating quite a few meals at the new house, including a delicous Saturday night dinner of Trader Joe's meatless meatballs with Trader Joe's artichoke hearts and Trader Joe's (is there a theme here?) tri-color bell pepper mix soaked in Trader Joe's marinara. Yesterday we had Trader Joe's tuna fish for lunch with real North Carolina Mt. Olive hot dog relish and corn on the cob.
We've been eating at the kitchen island, which has two bar stools that pull right up to it, because I am saving the dining room table for the Feast for the First Night of the Orange One In His New Home. Menu to follow... I'll post it once I know he's safely on the plane and can't check the blog.

Today we had a long staff meeting to orient a new staff person who started today, and we ordered in from Panera Bread for lunch. I ate the Fuji apple chicken salad, dressing on the side, with a cup of the lowfat vegetable soup. Not bad, and so much food that I may just drink brewers yeast broth for dinner and call it a day.

Though I have made a dent in the eggwhites I picked up at Trader Joe's weekend before last, our fridge is still looking like an Eggwhite Museum. An entire shelf is taken up by $1.99 eggwhite cartons. It makes me feel safe and secure to be surrounded by eggwhites. And MR and I will go through them fast, as they are the most incredibly versitle protein source I have ever met.

More recipes soon, I promise.

Posted by april at 5:35 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

Tea for Two

Yesterday MR suggested that I pick up an electric tea kettle that holds about two liters, so he can brew water for my green tea at the same time as he brews water for his green tea. [I feel almost guilty as I write this for bragging about how my CR'd mate will brew really fancy green tea for me to bring to work. At least it will make Scott happy that I am drinking green tea.] I pointed out that boiling our water at the same time may save MR six minutes a day. "What will we do with those six minutes?" I asked him. "I don't think I'd want to live that long," he said, and we collapsed into hysterical giggles.

Get it?

Of course you can find something more exciting/important/fulfilling to do for six minutes a day than watching water boil!

Add up all those six minutes, and you get quite a life-extension. Do you think you can find something to do?

Being dead, one would think, is even more boring than watching water boil.

Posted by april at 5:30 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 23, 2005

The Challenge Is to Make People Want to Hear What They Need to Know

The headline of today's post floated out of the radio this morning as I was listening to NPR and contemplating how very heavy my nineteen pound cat is when he jumps on my lap at five am. It reminded me of a debate that is ongoing in the CR world about the best way to educate others about the benefits of CR.

There's a lot of debate about how best to approach the topic. Some people feel like we should emphasize that even moderate CR has benefits, and choose "normal" people to be in the media as much as possible, staying away from the hardcore practitioners who some feel might scare the general public away. Others think it's good to show a diversity of CR styles, from so moderate as to be barely noticable to super-skinny seriousness. Some people think it's a waste of time to try to educate the public at large about CR at all.

As a CR blogger, I feel like I have a responsibility to tell you as much as I know, as honestly as I can. As one of the more normal-seeming CR practitioners who fits CR into a very active social life, complete with dinners out and work functions that involve food, I can make CR seem very accessible, managable, and even easy. I hope that by following my struggles to take my calories lower you are learning that while moderate CR has many benefits, it's not the only option out there. And that if you want maximum lifespan extension benefits, you're going to have to do more.

It's always a problem to balance wanting to appeal to the maximum number of people with being honest. People don't want to hear that their "healthy" diets are really crap. They don't want to hear that this isn't easy, that it requires unusual self-discipline and a willingness to be perceived as weird at times. CR has side-effects, and while mine have been overwhelmingly positive, many CR practitioners experience side-effects that most people wouldn't want to put up with.

I have always resented public health "authorities" who try to tell us what we want to hear, instead of what they know is true. I'd prefer that someone tell me the truth, and then leave me to decide what to do with it, than to be manipulated by those who think we're not strong enough to make our own decisions. That's what first drew me to MR's writing: the unflinching confrontation with the evidence, even when it says you're going to have to adopt a lifestyle in which you may be cold, hungry, freakishly skinny, have social struggles and... well, you get the idea. He had no idea at the time that I happen to like cold hungry freakishly skinny guys who have social struggles: he didn't even know I existed, so he clearly wasn't trying to impress me.

What if I had never read him, and had gone merrily about my then-very-moderate brand of CR, looking cute somewhere in the 110's and dropping dead at the same time as everyone else? I would have been denied the opportunity to make my own choices about what's right for my life.

Some people, though, think he's way too harsh. While he can be a bit sharp at times when pointing out that someone is being silly, (and I'd have to admit that I take a very un-evolved pleasure in that: *My* mate can beat up all the other males with his scientific knowledge... and he can protect me from the advancing hordes of saber-toothed french fries! My mate is the most desirable male in the tribe! So there!) he spends most of his on-list time educating people about what it will take to even have the hope of extending our lifespans. That is not always good news. Wouldn't it be easier to tell everyone that we can just eat "healthy" and everything would be fine?

The quest to make CR accessible without watering down the truth is a never-ending struggle for me. Remember how I used to be afraid that if I became a hardcore CR practitioner you would stop reading me cause I'd just eat the same thing every day? Well lately I've been pretty hardcore, sticking to my basics and writing about other stuff, and you keep showing up. I guess the blog didn't get all that boring...

People are always telling us to "lighten up" when we precisely measure our food or refuse "just one bite" of this or that. I don't quite get that. I mean, I frequently do have a little bite of this or that, and I go out to restaurants where my food is not precisely measured. But I don't consider that a positive character trait; if anything, I consider it a character flaw that I am not always as consistent in pursuit of my CR goals as my Orange One. While I can understand that it would be quite destructive to get all upset everytime I have a piece of cheese at a wedding reception, I don't see the point in having the piece of cheese just to placate the gods of moderation. If your goal is to live as long as possible, there are steps that we are fairly sure will help you achieve that goal. What, then, is fanatical, crazy or obsessive-compulsive about taking those steps, consistently and without diverging from the path? After all, if you were on your way to the wine store, no one would call you crazy for going straight there without stopping at the roller skating rink. You aren't criticizing those who perfer to roller skate, you're just trying to pick up some wine.

I think CR folks appear nutty because we live in a society where food has come to mean everything *but* a substance that we use to nourish our bodies so we can continue living in health. Food is a status symbol, a pain killer, a substitute for love, a distraction, a whip to beat ourselves with, but rarely is it seen as life-giving energy on a plate. If it were, the way CR practitioners eat would be boringly normal. We choose the foods that are best for us and then we eat them. As much as we need, and no more. How radical. How completely bizarre.

I find myself engaging in knee-jerk defensiveness about my CR when confronted with "normal" people asking questions. "Oh, I still go out to restaurants and drink wine and stuff," I hastily pipe up. When people find out that MR and I have never gone out to eat at a restaurant together, they can't seem to understand that we don't feel deprived at all. The experience of feeding each other yummy parcels of lifeforce at our own table is infinitely more satisfying than paying someone else to poison us. "But it's just not normal!" Well, hello, neither is living past 90! Neither is being thin after thirty! Neither is having perfectly pedicured toes at all times!

My CR brother Dean used to say that I was a postergirl for CR'd normality. The blog illustrates ways that I fit CR into a "normal" life. But I don't want to mislead you into thinking that living the way I have for the last year will get the same kind of life-extension benefits as the way MR or Kenton or any of the hardcore brothers eat. It doesn't make me a bad person that I still eat more than I absolutely have to, including the occasional slice of pizza. But it does speed up my aging process. So every day I make choices, and I try to make them with the best available information. I wouldn't want someone to tell me that I'm doing all I can when I know I'm not. As Billy Joel so famously said:

I don't want some pretty face
To tell me pretty lies
All I want is someone to believe.

Billy Joel, as always, has a point there.

I am hoping, in the months and years that follow, to pull-off the seemingly impossible task of being a very normal, very hardcore CR practitioner. I plan to make beautiful delicious meals for my lover, just like any young woman would do, except that mine will be low calorie and nutritionally perfect. I expect to enjoy the experience of my lover making delicious food for me, except that unlike Liz' Italian men, he will be making low calorie and nutritious food for me. And he will not spend seventeen hours cooking! When we cook for our friends together, we will trick them into eating healthy foods by making dishes so yummy that they won't want to go back to eating gak! I plan to continue going out with my friends, but making good choices when I do go out and balancing out the calories when I eat too much. This week has been a week of accidental hardcore CR, and so far so good. I've stayed down below 1000 all week, then yesterday I went out and ate a touch more, but not much. For lunch, my friend and I went out to the Gypsy Saloon, where I ate the cobb salad, minus the bacon, just vinegar on the side.

I hope that if I can figure out how to do this, I can teach you too. You can choose what parts of my CR practice you want to adopt, and throw out what doesn't work for you. Maybe you don't want to get all that skinny, or you don't want to give up rich dinners out with your partner. Maybe you have kids and they will burn down your house if you try to feed them healthy food. Maybe you hate eggwhites. It's up to you.

Won't I won't ever do is lie to you. If you don't like what I have to say you have the option to tune out. You could read the Victoria's Secret online catalog instead of me. You could check the weather. I hope that I am entertaining enough that you will keep coming back.

Besides, where else are you going to find recipes for fake feta cheese made of eggwhites?

Posted by april at 3:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 22, 2005

You Will Be Rewarded With Recipes

My faithful bloggiefriends are probably a bit upset with me now because I have been eating so boringly and not providing you with recipes. Well, rest assured that soon your faithfulness will be rewarded with an outpouring of amazing 625 calorie dinners, 500 calorie lunches, and exciting ways to use up the twenty cartons of eggwhites I purchased at Trader Joe's last weekend.

The thing is, I have been planning all of these feasts for MR's arrival weekend, and playing with my DWIDP to my little heart's content to get the ratios at right at 30:40:30, but I can't tell you what they are because MR reads the blog and they're all supposed to be surprises! The are going to be fabulous. I have some old favorites, as well as completely new foods. Quite a few of the meals are variations and improvements on familiar and beloved themes. I am even throwing together a bean soup that can be stored in jars for him to eat the first few days while I'm at work while he's organizing his lunches. And of course I am making a list of must-purchase items for Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. MR has never been to a Trader Joe's -- he may give up his atheism and decide to worship it.

So while I feel sorta bad that I'm not providing you with recipes, be comforted in the knowledge that in just a few short days, you will be showered with all the recipes you could ever want, complete with his and hers calorie counts. Perfect for the double CR couple, like Little MR and her husband. Is it a rule that one member of a CR'd couple must always have the initials MR? Points to ponder.

Posted by april at 7:27 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Hello, 102.

Now that's a weight I haven't seen in a long time.

Ironically enough, I had completely shelved the idea of taking my calories lower until MR arrives. It will be much easier then, when my breakfast salad for lunch and megamuffin half are lovingly packed for me every morning by the most beautiful man on earth. So I wasn't even trying but thanks to my familiar stress response, I appear to be dropping my calories anyway.

I've actually suspected this might happen for awhile. It is my classic response to stress to lose my appetite, but unlike pre-CR days when I would go a day without eating and then consume an entire plate of pasta with marinara sauce at one sitting, I've been forcing myself to eat my good healthy foods even when I don't feel like it. Like Liz, I've come up with foods I don't skip: eggwhites and flax oil, some source of calcium. And with cancer fears, I've added something cruciferous to the "never skip" list.

Tomorrow however may be a big eating day because I am doing three of my favorite things: having lunch with one of my best friends, filing for an election at the National Labor Relations Board, and going for happy hour drinks with my other best friend. How exciting! After the week I've had I feel desperately in need of a best friend lunch and a girls' night out, and I will get both. And filing for an election is always good... after all, that's what I do, right? I may also get the honor and privildege of going to the Philadelphia water company building... in order to change the water service in our new house to my name, they require me to appear in person with two forms of ID and a note from the landlord. They say they might not even accept that. In the kind of Kafkaesque scenario I have come to accept from utilities, they told me over the phone that they require two months of utilty bills in my name at the new house before they will change over the service. "But I want to change the service so that I can pay the utility bills." "But you have to prove that you live there before we change the service." Totally circular. What is a girl to do? They say they might, if I am lucky, accept a signed letter from the landlord (keep in mind that I am trying to PAY these people!) I wonder if I will be interviewed. "Why do you need water?" "Uh, so I can shower, wash dishes, and drink and cook with it?" Maybe I'll bring a resume just in case. "I promise I won't waste water. I'll be very good to it. I have a good job! I am a responsible person! Just allow me to pay the water bill!"

The good news is that I don't have cancer. My doctor said that I had cells that "look abnormal and look normal at the same time." I thought to myself: I hope no one ever says that about my appearance! But I don't have cancer. He took a biopsy of the cells in question, so now I can really identify with how a piece of paper feels when you punch a hole in it. Ouch!!! I may never be able to wield a hole puncher again! I spent the rest of the day in considerable pain, but between painting and having to run down to Delaware County to pick up a card at 8 pm from a nurse, I didn't have time for the pain (yes it's a Carly Simon quote.) I am feeling much better now, and I get the results back in two weeks. While I'm not thrilled to have that hanging over my head for the next two weeks, it's good to know that at least I don't have cancer.

One of the more entertaining parts of my job is that I spend a lot of time meeting nurses in locations near their homes or jobs, and that takes me to a lot of places I wouldn't have occasion to visit otherwise. Tonight I had to go to a bar in Delaware County (which is just south of the city of Philadelphia) where I met one of my favorite nurses after work. As I am chronically early, I had plenty of time to drink a seltzer water with lemon while waiting (I wanted a beer, but I was driving and haven't been eating much so there was no way I was going to have a drink). While I enjoyed my seltzer I got to witness a little bar fight. Some guys had been giving the bar tender a hard time and started to yell at him, so he had to eject them. Very exciting. One of the other patrons, in an attempt to calm the offending parties, pointed out that there was a lady sitting next to them. That was me. I suppose I am a lady now. I just kept my nose buried in my Irish newspaper (south of Philly is a very Irish and Italian suburb) and hoped it would all go away. I was not in the mood to break up a bar fight. I mean really. Can't a girl drink a seltzer with lemon in peace?

Posted by april at 12:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 21, 2005

Cancer, Like Jury Duty, Never Comes at a Convenient Time

Some of you know that I have an encyclopedic memory for dates. I remember the date on which everything happened. It's a fun parlour trick, but it also lands me in situations where I start the day thinking: "This day can't be worse than it was in 2002, but may be as painful as it was in 1991, but probably won't be nearly as much fun as it was in 2004." Then I'm all confused and don't know what to expect. This will get even worse if our project is successful and I live a very long time, as I will have more years and thus more dates of significance floating around in my head. And since I'd imagine that radical anti-aging biomedicine would address age-related memory loss, I will probably never lose my freakishly good memory. At 120 I'll be wandering around telling everyone a list of 50 things that happpened on such and such a date. Won't that be fun?

Today is one of those days of overlapping significance. July 21st was the day on which my boyfriend in Vermont dumped me in 2002, leading to July 22, when I picked up the phone and called my old friend Bill who had offered me the job I have now and told him I'd take the job. Subtext: GET ME OUT OF HERE!!! I escaped Vermont, and what followed has been the happiest three years of my life. July 21, therefore, while incredibly painful, turned out quite well in the end.

July 21st is also the day on which I lost my virginity, in a year that is none of your business. I hope you're not too disappointed that I'm not saving myself for marriage, but since MR doesn't believe in marriage (he believes it exists, he just doesn't think it's a good thing) it would be quite irksome to be saving myself for the rest of my dramatically extended lifespan wouldn't it? Ick.

July 21 is also my boss' son's birthday. He just turned nine. Isn't that cute?

So when I called up my doctor to schedule the painful and invasive test I have to have for cervical cancer and the secretary said that the earliest they could do was July 21, I thought, let's throw another thing onto this date, as the calendar is not sufficiently crowded yet.

I am really pretty freaked out about this test. It's the fourth year in a row that I've had bad pap smear results, and while the test always comes back okay, I had really thought that between CR and I-3-C everything would finally be okay. The chances of me having full-blown cervical cancer are pretty minimal, but I'm still terrified. And the chances of having something that requires cryosurgery, which is supposed to be very painful and take about six weeks to heal, are pretty high.

Meanwhile, I'm painting the bedrooms in the new house, getting ready for the arrival of my Orange One, and trying to move. Oh, and did I mention that work is heating up, with the result that I'm running down to Delaware County to meet nurses at all hours of the day and night? Yeah. I was so exhausted yesterday that I could barely stay awake until the mattress people delivered the bed that my father and step-mother bought us. I just kept lying back down on the couch and staring at the pretty flame of the vanilla candles I bought on massive sale at Target. $1.49 for three pillar candles, if you can believe that.

VLC is taking me to the test, which just goes to show that you can always count on your CR'd girlfriends. I feel like she and I are ready to take those "in sickness and in health" vows, she's been there for me so much. I hope to be as good a friend to her as she has been to me. I did give her some Essential Mix and I will share our brownies and megamuffins with her.

I know it's unlikely that I will actually have cancer, but it's just soooo scary!

It's just one week now till the Orange One arrives, and I am taking great pleasure in designing the menu for his first weekend in town. Whenever I start to spin horrible scenarios in which I die later this year of cervical cancer, I distract myself by trying to figure out how to hit Zone ratios in delicious 625 calorie dinners. With as much broccoli as possible. In fact, I am thinking I need to run up to the Allentown Farmers' Market and buy some purple broccoli and purple cauliflower so as to add weird color to our meals. They taste the same as regular veggies, they are just a pretty purple color. Like purple kale. They look incredibly cool over eggwhites.

In another week, I will be the happiest person on earth. Right now, I am battling the temptation to crawl under my co-worker's desk and refuse to come out until it's all over.

At least I don't have jury duty.

Posted by april at 7:57 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 20, 2005

If You Had Had More Time

One of the songs that made a huge impression on me as a child was Supertramp's "Take the Long Way Home." In fact, I'd say that second to "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," it is my favorite song in the world. We used to listen to it in the car on our way to nursery school when I was about four, and my then-step-father would ask me if I wanted to go the long way or the short way. I always wanted to take the long way, both because I loved the Supertramp song and because I didn't particularly care for nursery school.

Yes, even as a four year old, I made all major decisions in my life by consulting the pop music radio station.

There's a line in the song that I found disturbing even on the way to nursery school:

When you look through the years
And see what you could have been
What you might have been
If you had had more time

I remember thinking to myself something along the lines of: Grown-ups clearly feel some kind of regret about not doing something they had wanted to do. I can't let that happen to me.

That fear of regret has led me to live by some principles I hold sacred. I'll write them out for you. Don't worry, number 1 is not "Eat 70 g protein a day."

1. When in doubt, do it. Jump on the plane, take the job, send the email, buy the dress, adopt the kitten. Feel the fear and do it anyway, as some magnet I saw on a fridge once said.

2. Ignore social pressure as much as possible. (Note that I have not married, had children, or given into this hideous revival of preppy pink and green.)

3. Live as long as possible.

It's taken a lot of work to live by these principles. It can also be quite expensive, especially the jumping on the plane and adopting the kitten part (that kitten is now a nineteen pound cat whose food costs more than mine does.) But it's always been well worth it.

Principle #3 is the one that brings us here together today. I took quite literally Supertramp's words about "if you had had more time," and I thought it would be horrifying to get to the end of life and realize that there were things I really wanted to do but just didn't have time for.

I think that a lot of people deal with the very same fear, but instead of searching for ways to acquire more time (ie CR, supporting the Mprize, etc.) they scale back their expectations. Instead of finding a way to remain young and healthy as long as possible, they decide that they didn't really want to do all those neat things anyway. The scaling back of expectations seems to start shortly after college, and is really rolling by the time the babies start to arrive. Then there's one convenient excuse after another: the kids are too small, we have to pay for college, I'm too fat, I'm too sick, I'm too old.

I'd rather just get more time. It takes a whole lot less effort for me to do CR and pay my Three Hundred commitment than it would take to talk myself out of my dreams.

In my work, I see a lot of people who have scaled back their expectations. Sometimes they have scaled back so much that they can't imagine getting a bathroom break in a twelve hour shift, much less living their dreams. It serves as a constant reminder to me to stick to my principles, even when I risk getting hurt, feeling scared, or being publicly ridiculed for not owning the proper purse.

Breaking through the denial that people live in about the horror of aging and death is one of the principle tasks of people like Aubrey de Grey and my very own MR who are called to educate the public about the possibility of real anti-aging biomedicine. It isn't easy breaking through the knee-jerk apologism for the aging process: as my mother used to say, "Denial is more than a river in Egypt." (If you don't get that, sound it out with a heavy southern accent.) If you want to see denial in action, look at how many ICU nurses smoke. Lying in the bed, hooked up to a heart monitor, breathing through a ventilator, is the patient dying of lung cancer. On her two minute break, the nurse goes outside for a smoke. That two minutes worth of pleasure is, in that moment, worth the sacrifice of life and health.

But it's not worth sacrificing your dreams. For me to do anything other than CR would be slow-motion suicide, and even on my worst days, I've never been suicidal. (I have rarely even been homicidal, though I have occasionally wanted to hand out index cards that read "Have a nice day elsewhere.")

CR has given me hope... hope of a longer life, hope of better health, and the every day reality of living in a body that I love and that feels good almost all the time. Even when I'm painting walls until ten at night and then out the door by six the next morning to meet a nurse at a convenience store to give her a union card. Even as I'm watching a zillion SUV owners pull up to the convenience store in search of coffee. Even when I'm wondering how you can possibly like Wawa coffee. Even when I'm pondering the fact that my own mother likes Wawa coffee. Even then, I feel good in my body. And the whistling of construction workers as they get their bad coffee at the convenience store at 6 am also reminds me of the benefits of CR, though I hear that not all CR practitioners get whistled at by construction workers. Might be one of those side-effects that breaks down on gender lines.

If it weren't for CR, and the change it has made in my life, I doubt that I would be able to grasp the concept of a radically biomedically extended youthful life. I might understand it intellectually, of course, as I am pretty smart. But I wouldn't feel it the way I do, as a serious possibility for which I am willing to sacrifice my time and money. Faith is easy when you can feel the power working in your own cells. CR is nowhere near enough, and we can't even be sure that it will carry us far enough to make it to escape velocity (if you don't know what I'm talking about read this.) But because I can feel CR working, and my bloodwork confirms that I'm doing pretty well, I no longer feel that aging is inevitable.

Who decides how long we live, how healthy we are? I've never been one to give into social pressure, so I'm not about to defer to those who say that aging is "natural" and therefore acceptable. Dying of consumption used to be natural too, and we got rid of that. Pain in childbirth is natural, and I know a lot of people who say that's for the birds. I certainly am not going to give into those who say that it's not natural for a woman to be thin and beautiful way into her thirties (and forties, and fifties, and nineties! And one-twenties!) It's so rare that one can, with complete assurance, say, "You're just jealous!" but this is the other one of those times.

To the extent I am able, I will take control over my own life and health. I practice CR as intensely as I can manage, and I donate as much time and money as I can to the Mprize. I refuse to wear little shirts with alligators on them with the collars up.

It takes time and money and work, but it sure is easier than giving up my dreams.

Posted by april at 9:51 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 18, 2005

Life Would Be Better if It Were Blueberries

Okay, I finally got around to finishing the entry I started in response to the comments the other day. Sorry it took so long, but here 'tis.

Thanks to all for the interesting comments! Liz had the best one:

Secretly, I've always thought broccoli would be better if it was blueberries, but it never occurred to me to say so on a billboard.

Glad to see that Scott is still reading... and that Liz is on the verge of converting him to CR! Scott says:

I'm highly impressed by your fellow CRONer Elizabeth, who seems to properly strength train, too. She is perhaps the best complete-package CRONer I've seen (from a food AND exercise perspective), and will likely enjoy the most healthy lifespan.

I, too, am highly impressed with Elizabeth, not just because she's got a great diet and a gorgeous body, but because she's a fabulous writer!

However, from the perspective of life-extension (that's living longer, folks, dramatically longer), I'd have to regretfully suspect that Liz won't be the winner of the how long can you live contest.

Now before you freak out, a) I do not wish Elizabeth ill, or want her to die b) Scott didn't say LONGEST lifespan, he said most healthy lifespan. My guess is he's going to say those are two different things, but for all the reasons that MR discussed in his recent guest entry, I'm going to say that you're not having a healthy lifespan if you're dead.

There are a few reasons why I don't think Liz will, in the end, live longer than me, or MR, or many of the other CR practitioners of whom Scott apparently approves less.

1. She started later.

Starting CR late is great, and much better than never starting it at all. But the animals who get the longest lifespans start CR right after weaning! Why didn't my mom think of that??? Now of course they have side effects that most humans would find intolerable, like smaller body size, but the point remains: the earlier you start, the longer you live.

However: recent findings that MR talks about in a paper that I can't seem to link to but that I can send you if he says it's okay seem to indicate that late onset CR, if the late onset mice are fed the same number of calories as the early onset group are fed, can yield similar extension in remaining lifespan. Now that would be cool! [MR: if I totally screwed that up, please fix it. I only re-read the paper once, as opposed to my usual ten to twelve times for a scientific article. I was really busy painting the house. I did the best I could. And you wouldn't want your office to be hot pink just because I was re-reading one of your articles ten times, now would you?] That being said, I'm not going to take a chance and wait till I'm 40 or 50 to start. Besides, I'm in such better health now, I wouldn't want to spend the next ten or twenty years feeling the way I did pre-CR! And the conventionally held view is the earlier the better, so Spindler's dancing mice aside, I'm going to keep my calories low.

2. Exercise doesn't cause lifespan extension. There are tremendous benefits in terms of obesity avoidance and bone health and such from exercise, but extension of maximum lifespan is not one of them.

Of course, what makes the most sense for Liz is whatever Liz wants to do! If that means devoting the rest of her however long life to turning broccoli into blueberries, than that's what she should do! She discusses the choices she makes about her CR and her bodybuilding in a great post on her blog today.

Liz actually has among the lowest calorie counts of CR practitioners I've heard of, and I don't think she would be able to go much lower even if she cut back some on the muscle mass. Liz has got it going on, CR wise, due to her 1100 a day. No one who is honest about their calorie count (and very few people are, my friends... not that I'm saying people are liars, I've blogged a zillion times about calorie creep that happens if you EVER eat out or fail to measure.) Liz's food is the easy to measure kind, and if she's counting and counting right, then she's one of the most hardcore CR women out there.

But let's say that we have a hypothetical Liz, who is 20. Let's call her Beth, so we won't confuse her with the real live Liz. Beth is 20, she's full grown to whatever height she's going to be, and she's having so much fun that she wants to live as long as she possibly can. So she's making some decisions about her life.

She finds out about CR. She decides to do it. Slowly over a period of a year or two, she loses weight very gradually and uses nutritional software and a postal scale to weigh and measure her food exactly. She continues to lower her calories while keeping up an exercise regimen of running about twenty minutes a day and some weight lifting for bone health. She eventually hits amenorrhea due to low body fat or whatever, and she doesn't mind because she doesn't want kids anyway so not being able to get pregnant at this particular moment is actually a plus. She has sex every day because she read in GQ, a most reliable source on the topic, that having sex every day adds eight years to your lifespan. Her partner, while skeptical of the scientific validity of the study in question, is happy to go along with the program.

Beth's trainer at the gym suggests that she train for a weight lifting competition, and Beth says, sure, why not? So she begins to train, but quickly realizes that if she's going to build more muscle and burn more calories, both through the exercise itself and because muscles burn more calories just hanging about, she's going to have to eat more.

Beth's main goal is the longest, healthiest lifespan possible. She started young. She is religious about her very low, carefully monitored calorie intake and nutrition. She rarely skips a day of having sex, and if she does due to travel or whatever, she is careful to make up for it the next day.

Beth decides to stick with her good-enough-for-bone-and-cardio-health exercise routine, but not to go for the power lifting competition. Cause she'd have to eat more Calories, and in the end, lower calories, not bigger muscles, are what seem to be causing the lifespan extension.

Now I'd just like to make it clear that I am not Beth, and Beth is not me, no matter how similar we may appear to be on the surface. Beth, like Cindy, the made-up protein guzzling ad lib woman from a few months back, is a fictional character, created to prove a point.

The point is, if life-extension, that is, living as long as possible, is your goal, you must exercise enough to make your bones and your heart happy, but beyond that, you're wasting your calories.

Now I personally find plenty of ways to consume more calories than I really need to without exercising a ton, and skipping a power lifting competition is no sacrifice for me. But for some CR practitioners, like Kenton the CR'd surfer boy, it's a serious concern. We all have a variety of goals, and sometimes our goals are in competition with each other, so we compromise. I thought Liz had a great explanation of how she balances her goals of weight lifting and calorie lowering. My struggles are a little less heroic: Goal 1: Live as long as possible. Goal 2: Create a low carb margarita. Compromise!

I think the most important thing is that we pursue our goals with as much knowledge as possible. We can get tremendous support and advice from each other, even when our goals are different. For example, MR has helped me improve my diet and supplement plan, and he isn't in the slightest bit interested in a low carb margarita. We compromise.

And just fyi, that GQ article is for real. I didn't make it up. And if I were you, I wouldn't take any chances.

Posted by april at 4:26 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 17, 2005

He Jumps On the Couch and Bullies People for Vegetables

No, this is not a story about what happens when you take MR to a party! He's actually quite well-behaved and brings his own food. Rather, this is how a woman at the party I just went to described her rabbit's behavior. Sounds like a critter after my own heart!

After my otherwise CR-stellar weekend, I had a rather un-CR friendly evening. I went to a party at the home of my friend the medical writer... you remember her, I met her in the airport at Thanksgiving? Well anyway, she was having a backyard barbeque, except that it turned out to be a cookout in the living room as it poured rain all evening. I did something I haven't done in about ten years... I ate a hamburger! I know you are dying of shock. It was okay. I figure a little extra iron can't hurt every once in awhile. There was no vegetarian option, so I figured, why not? I've been eating very lightly lately, as I've been extremely busy between work, the Kurzweil auction and the move (spent the afternoon painting, with help from mom) and when I get busy, I get less hungry. So I ate some red meat... I don't remember the last time I had beef. It was weird, but fine... not overwhelming, not nearly as good as my own food or MR's. It was a very post-vegetarian experience to eat fit in with everyone else at a cook-out. It's funny how I fit in much more easily on my CR plan than I did as a lowfat vegan. Of course, I compensate for the calories elsewhere, and will immediately be back to my solid CR diet. I don't see myself eating a hamburger any more than once every ten years.

More philosophy soon... once I get done with this first coat of primer.

Posted by april at 7:18 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

The Goddess Cooks for a Crowd

I know it may seem odd, but I actually find cooking for large groups of people to be a relaxing activity. I enjoy playing with vegetables, mixing up sauces, and figuring out how long something can stay in the oven without setting the house on fire. Cooking is almost a religious activity for me... it is one way that I meditate. I really do consider the cooking process to be an infusion of my own life energy into the food that then acts as a vehicle for giving life to others. This is much easier than childbirth, and doesn't obligate you to spend 18 years being financially responsible for the person... at worst, you just have to do the dishes. Cooking is a form of chanelling the goddess, and letting her give life to others in new and exciting ways.

One thing that switching my dinner party cooking menus to CR friendly ones has done for me is to remove any inconsistency in this theory of cooking. When I was still serving some high calorie, high saturated fat foods to guests, I had to live in a certain amount of denial about what kind of life force I was transmitting. Now, I feel like a clear laser beam of low calorie goodness, zapping healthy food into unsuspecting eaters.

Last night I entertained for the first time in our new home! I thought about seven to ten were coming... I had twelve. Luckily, I made dishes that stretch. I made my CR friendly pastaless lasagna with roasted red peppers and artichoke hearts inside. Then I made black bean tostadas: low carb whole wheat tortillas (50 calories each -- and I called MR from Trader Joe's to read the ingredients to him and make sure there was nothing evil in them) topped with black beans with just a bit of chipoltle Tabasco sauce stirred in, topped with a thin layer of shredded part-skim cheese, and baked until lightly brown. I made my own guacamole (avocados, juice of a lime, Tabasco) yesterday morning, which I put out on our beautiful new kitchen island along with three kinds of Trader Joe's salsas and two kinds of Tabasco for people to make up their own ideal tostada. I also served a salad of romaine, arugula, and red peppers with carrots and tomatoes on the side for people to add at will. Dessert turned out to be fresh fruit provided by my mom, who I think may be in the fruit trafficing business. She showed up with several giant fresh pineapples and a big watermelon, that one of my friends got to carry. She also added red grapes and blueberries, so folks could munch on small fruit or large wedges of big fruit.

All in all, the evening was a huge success. Not a drop of either entree remained. I decided not to do appetizers because we were having a workshop before dinner, so I figured everyone would want to dig right into the main course once that was over. I did have some wasabi cashews sitting out for folks to munch on as they gathered pre-workshop. The green salad wasn't eaten in its entirity, but next time I'll know to make more entrees because I think this crowd would have consumed another pan of lasagna if given the option.

One of my eaters gave me some brilliant advice... she noted that the lasagna turns out a bit runny, and suggested that I salt and drain the zucchini before putting it in the baking dish. That way it won't release a ton of water while cooking, making my lasagna runneth over. It was a very educational evening.

I know it's weird, but I feel so spiritually refreshed after a day of cooking and an evening of eating with friends. One of the eaters asked if I was enjoying myself or just running around (those of you who have eaten with me know how I like to hover and make sure everyone is okay and enjoying the food) and I tried to describe how much more relaxing it is for me to cook for a crowd than to rally and go out somewhere. It's work, sure, and it can still have its stressful moments... like when I realized I didn't have potholders at the new house... just as the lasagna had to come out of the oven! I think I enjoy cooking the way some people enjoy sports. What looks like work is actually pure pleasure. And unlike a good game of tennis, you can eat the results!

Posted by april at 5:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 16, 2005

Now, Their Bellies Full, It's Time to Look for a Mate

That line just floated out of the NPR from a documentary about penguins. I thought it would make a cool blog headline.

I'm sorry I haven't written... I've been really, really busy between work and the lunch of a lifetime auction! Luckily, MR had some comments he couldn't figure out how to post without destroying the format, so I've agreed to post them in their very own entry. He's responded to some of the questions posed by Dan in his last comment.

MR says:

All:

First, April: GREAT entry: funny & dead-on. What an amazing woman you are.

Dan:
Did I really say "Dying is not healthy?" Or did you mean a
different Dan?

I believe that April is actually remembering me quoting Al P. in the
midst of a response to a comment from you in The Rant. I quoted it just after another Al P. zinger: "Reclusive? Show me the one who is on the wrong side of the sod, and I will show a recluse."

I'm not afraid of death, I'm afraid of getting old.

That's probably the one thing that makes me different from you and all the other people who read this blog. At this point in my life at least, living a really long time just doesn't feel like a priority to me. What is a priority is not losing the ability to do the things I like to do.

If you're dead, you have lost the ability to do the things that you like to do ;).

Look, when I say I want to live forever, it's not because I seriously
envision the alternative being subjectively like being locked in a box
forever: I understand that oblivion is, er, painless.

Like you, I certainly am more afraid of sensescence than of death per
se. Aging means slowly losing the health and vigor of body and brain -
becoming more and more disabled, wracked with pain, dulled of sense,
and weak of wit, with every passing day. So of course, everyone reacts
to it with horror, unless s/he is intentionally putting it out of hir
mind -- just as one would react with nausea, fear, pity, and rage to a
teh suffering and physical pathology of a person with advanced cancer.

But suppose that aging were abolished, in favor of the famous "one hoss shay:" everything would be in perfect working order for threescore and ten, and then one day you would simply keel over. Life have been as good in every day between tomorrow and the day of your death as it is today.

Dan, it sounds like you're happy with life, and the health that CR (and exercise) brings you. So would you want to die tomorrow? Would you even be simply resigned to it? If not, then why would you want to die two days from now? Three? Four? Eleventy-twelve? What makes you think that there is going to be a day when you're going to be ready to just give up on the simple, overwhelming privilege of being a conscious being in healthy flesh?

I am very confident that no such day is coming. I'm alive, and I'm
young, and oh, God, I'm happy. Why would I want to give that up? Ergo,
by default, I want to live forever. That seems like a self-evident
conclusion to me.

If I were whisked off this earth right now, I just don't believe I'd be aware of the fact that I had died--I just wouldn't be around any more.

Yes -- exactly. What a tragedy! What a senseless loss for you, and for
the universe: an unique point of view, a conscious mind -- obliterated.

I wouldn't regret all the things I didn't get to do, nor would I
celebrate the things I had achieved.

No, because dead people don't do any of that. But if you were given a
choice, today, about whether you would live or die tomorrow, wouldn't
you choose life? Even if it came at substantial cost? Indeed, you make
that choice every day. Staying alive is expensive, in dollars and in
every other way. You could save yourself enormous trouble by just ending it -- a task you could achieve without suffering anything, with a simple case purchase of NyQuil. But you choose to struggle on, because your life is precious. And hell: people will do this when the cost is enormous: when keeping body and soul together requires enormous, back-breaking labor, or when every day is a struggle with pain and disability.

The "immortalist" just sees that the same will always be true. I want to live forever in a young body, full of life. And just as you give up some of your time every day to keep alive in the short term (purchase of food, shelter, etc), I project that investment into the future, when such efforts will not be enough, because my body will be rotting at the molecular level, my youth and health sliding away.

Maybe you guys who are into life extension can help me out with this
question: How can you dedicate so much of your energy to living as long as possible without developing a debilitating fear of death?

I think that everyone has a debilitating fear of death, which s/he then displaces into other, ineffective pursuits, from fame to grand causes to religion to having children. I simply face the fear consciously and take action.

Usually, when you put a lot of energy into something, to have it
completely not work would be pretty devestating.

But I don't intend for it not to work :D. ANYTHING you might do could
fail: that doesn't, normally, lead people to simply not try to
accomplish anything; indeed, we rightly think that people who take this tack have impoverished lives.

If you raise your expectations of living a long time to such a high level, make it such a priority in your life, become impassioned about it, how would you deal with it if you found out you only had a month left to live because you, say, contracted some rare disease?

I will likely be all the more pissed because of apparently wasted
effort, of course. But the point is, again, that I intend and expect to buy more youth and health for my labors, so it really doesn't make much sense as a question. I am precisely putting off the time when that reality comes.

Maybe it would help if I turned the question around. You are asking why I am so desperately trying to avoid "death." Perhaps I'm not. Perhaps I am actually struggling with all of my strength to extend Life.

-MR

Posted by april at 4:55 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 13, 2005

Broccoli Would Be Better If It Were Meat

and slathered with barbeque sauce.

This is the uplifting message that a billboard I passed on my way to a hospital this afternoon trumpeted to the very depressed neighborhood I was passing through. Great way to send health-destroying messages to our nation's poor.

Made me think I should devote today's blog entry to statements that are so patently absurd as to be amusing. For instance, the oft-heard shriek of the uninitiated upon hearing the height/weight stats of some of our hardcore CR'd brothers: "That can't be healthy!"

The people who say this are usually overweight, totally uneducated about CR, and eating a cheesesteak. At least, that has been my experience.

CR works because it makes you healthy. As Dan once said, long, long ago: "Dying is not healthy."

How about, "Oil is bad for you," when declared by someone holding a copy of John McDougall's latest work. No, that's just silly. Now I don't recommend that you suck down peanut oil, but olive, hazelnut, flax? Just today I considered writing a love poem to flax oil as I spread it on my warm and waiting eggwhites. Then I got worried that my Orange One might be jealous if I started writing love poetry to oils. Then I remembered that my Orange One doesn't believe in jealousy, so he wouldn't be jealous, but he might well think it was really, really weird. My point being: flax oil is just fabulous. Pick some up today! But put it in the freezer... it oxidizes faster than you can say "Tastes buttery -- serve it on steamed vegetables!"

Back to absurd and false statements. How about:
"I'm not worried about aging because I have good genes."

Okay, is anyone in your family dead? If even one of your ancestors has died, then your genes are not good enough to protect you from age-related disease and disability indefinitely. CR won't do it either... though we hope it will put off the currently-inevitable long enough for us to catch that bus to SENS-style reversal of aging. That's why we need to donate to the Mprize... so we can get there faster! Your genes are not that good. Don't be silly.

Here's another of my favorites:

"I don't need to do CR because I'm already skinny."

I hate to say it, but one of my favorite people has said this in public. CR is not about weight! Life-extension benefits are not a result of being thin, they're a result of eating fewer calories without compromising nutrition! Like, hello! I know you've seen the rodent studies. I saw you look at them. Don't say stuff like this. It makes you seem like you're on drugs, and people are weird about that.

Aha, here we come to what may be my all time favorite:

"I think that exercise is more important than CR."

Well, yes, if you are a professional basketball player, then exercise is more important to you than CR because the millions of dollars you make depends on your ability to do exercise-related program activities. But for LIFESPAN EXTENSION CR is the only method proven to work in mammals! You can spend all the time you want at the gym, and that's just fab for obesity avoidance and putting off some kinds of disease and making you look sexy to people who like that type, but it will not equal actual extension of maximum lifespan. Sure, it's better to be fit than to be a couch potato eating fried potatoes. But that's not we're talking about. CR'd mammals actually see an increase in maximum lifespan, not just hanging out around the high end of normal. Will it work for humans? Well, stick around and see. But if you're going to be around to find out, I suggest you start CR. Or donate A WHOLE LOT to the Mprize.

How about this:

"I wouldn't want to live that long."

What, precisely, would you prefer to be doing?

The people who say this usually have the completely nonsensical notion that life-extension means extension of the period of elderly frailty. That makes no sense. Extension of youth and health is the whole point.

You find me someone who is healthy in both body and brain and not suicidally depressed, and give him or her the choice between living another day or dropping dead. Life can be good and life can be bad, but most people choose to keep on doing it.

Posted by april at 5:57 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 12, 2005

The Slow and Steady Fire

One unusual side effect of my own personal aging process has been a greatly increased ability to understand Carly Simon songs. I noticed it first a couple of months ago when I was driving down the highway thinking 'bout my Orange One and "Loving You's the Right Thing To Do" came on the radio. Then a few weeks later I heard "Haven't Got Time for the Pain" and thought about how ever since I've known CR, I haven't had time to feel that body angst that afflicts almost all women. Well, it happened again.

This evening I was driving down the highway after a meeting with nurses and I was listening to the "Coming Around Again" album... you know, the one that was featured in that excellent movie Heartburn by Nora Ephron. The song "The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of" came on, and for the first time I thought I got it. I've always fast-forwarded through the song before because on the face of it, it's about marriage, and how women should try to look at their husbands differently when they get bored and wonder if the grass might be greener elsewhere. As I have never been married, I didn't think the song had that much to say to me.

But tonight, as I was leaving a meeting where nurses came together to take the first brave step towards organizing a union, I finally got the song.

I finally understood because instead of thinking of it in the context of marriage, I thought about it in the context of my organizing work. There are times when I get frustrated with the seemingly glacial progress of organizing workers, and when I despair of ever seeing a better day. Yet, at these moments when I have the great honor and priviledge of helping nurses take one small amount of control over their work lives, I realize that while my passion for my work has grown and changed over the years, sometimes flaring up, sometimes mellowing out, it remains a slow and steady fire. The process of organizing is by defintion person by person: you don't move mountains with one stick of dynamite, you move them one little rock at a time. The campaign I started tonight is tiny: looks like just 26 professionals, the smallest I've ever done. My last election was 1200 RN's! But it doesn't matter: organizing workers is one of the most pure forms of transmission of the life force that I have ever encountered. As the hockey player said in The Cutting Edge (a movie that people who love me should study like the Bible), "There are only two things I do really well, sweetheart. And skating is the other one."

I get cynical. I get downtrodden. I get to despairing and my co-workers and I sit around dreaming up booths that would be featured in a Festival of Futility. [Envision: Sisyphus station: Contestants roll a very heavy boulder up a hill. Just as they reach the top, it falls back down to the bottom.] We have had hard times and we have had good times. But like Billy Joel so famously said, "I took the good times. I'll take the bad times. I'll take you just the way you are."

My passion has changed so much over the years that for awhile I thought its flame had gone out entirely. I was willing to put aside my beloved organizing career to go do the OTHER thing I really, really believe in, and that was fundraise for the Mprize. I often reflect that I am extremely blessed to have more than one cause to which I may passionately devote my energies. I am also blessed that I can continue to work hard as an unpaid volunteer for the Mprize while I pursue my full-time passion at work.

Being a part of a movement that is moving so slowly that at times it appears to be caught in a bad supermarket line is great preparation for doing CR. I often say that organizing means mimimal return for maximal effort, but if you don't make the maximum effort, you get no results whatsoever. I come at any endeavor with the attitude that I will have to work very, very hard, and may see few results immediately, even in my lifetime. I am not kidding when I say I need radical anti-aging biomedicine to see my life's work come to fruition. I really mean that. I will pour out my heart and soul in organizing 26 workers, while millions remain unorganized, for the time being. But to do otherwise would be to do nothing at all, and I can't live with that. I have to do what I can, in the here and now, while I wait for better days.

CR is a lot like that. We know it won't buy us the radical postponement of age related disease and disability that we want. It will, we believe, buy us some years. And we get to have a lot of fun with hazelnut oil in the meantime. But we must do CR if we are to make it to see the better things.

Every month, my $85 Three Hundred membership payment comes out of my bank account. And I miss it. I don't immediately see the results from my contribution. But I am conditioned by my organizing work to expect to put in a whole lot before I ever get anything back. And to be willing to put in everything I have to give with no expectation of ever seeing the return. The young organizers who expected to see results right away burned out years ago, right after they figured out that no one would be standing on a chair with a sign that says "Union" like Norma Rae. (Norma Rae, by the way, is a double name, as is common in the South. Her last name was not Rae. She was Norma Rae Webster. Mrs. Webster, to you.)

The high moments keep us going. When I read a chapter of the my angel's writing about the life-saving biomedine that is to come, my faith is restored and I can chop another bunch of salad greens as I eagerly await the coming of the day of triumph. When I see nurses reach out and grab the power that is their right as human beings, I feel the familiar flare of passsion, the slow and steady fire, burning bright again.

"July 12th," said the nurse who organized today's meeting as she signed her union card. "May it live in infamy."

Posted by april at 10:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Eat More Vegetables

Always good advice, unless you are MR and you already eat more vegetables before nine am than most people do all year.

I'm on a new kick to eat even more vegetables, since for a CR'd person, my diet has been comparatively low in the cute little crunchy critters (and I don't mean soft shell crabs.) Even though I always come out way over 100% on the RDA's of Vitamins A and C, there are so many good things in vegetables and they are so low calorie that one feels like one should eat more of them. When you watch Kenton, Dean, MR, or many of the CR boys eat a meal, you really have to marvel at their ability to pack in the veggies. It's like they are lumberjacks cutting down huge forests of greens with their chainsaw-like teeth. I am filled with admiration as I watch MR destroy a supersized bowl of lightly steamed exotic vegetables. And in the constant search for ways to improve my diet without adding calories, I have resolved to follow his fine example and eat more vegetables.

So: I went to the wonderful produce store that is right next to my apartment and lo and behold: a new green! For months MR has been on me to find some more high nutrient greens to put into my salad, but I haven't had the energy to run around Chinatown looking for them. Today, however, I found a huge bunch of dandilion greens practically in my own backyard, and wow, they're cool! It was really more of a bouquet than a bunch, as they were very tall and leafy and could have easily been transported in a vase. I brought them home and chopped them into my kale salad. Along with olive oil, salsa and balsamic vinegar, the dandilion and kale salad almost tasted like that thing of wonder and beauty, MR's Breakfast Salad. Almost, but not quite. The dandilion greens were a touch on the bitter side, but the kale balanced them out. As we know, I like extremes in all things, so bring on the bitter greens!

I do love playing with vegetables. Tonight I have a meeting from 5 pm to 8 pm at a pub, and I am hoping to be able to order at least a limp tossed salad with vinegar, since we will have to order something as booth rental if we sit there for three hours. Then when I get home I have another giant bag of frozen carrots, cauliflower and broccoli waiting to be mixed with flax oil and brewers yeast. Yippie! Veggies!

I'd have to admit that I'm starting to lose my taste for frozen vegetables. I'm getting so used to the taste of delicious fresh summer veggies, just lightly steamed with a touch of flax or olive oil and perhaps a squeeze from a fresh lemon or lime, or just some fresh ground pepper and a dash (I know what you're thinking MR, to you it looks like an avalanche but to me it's a dash) of half-salt. I have to go get some more brussels sprouts to play with. It's so much fun to watch them roll around the plate. If you can't play with your food, you should get out of the kitchen. Or something like that.

The most exciting thing about my dandilion green discovery is that now I have my very own stems! Unlike kale stems which I usually just chop into my salad and eat then and there, these stems will need to be either steamed or eaten with salsa, like tall skinny low cal high nutrient tortilla chips. My very own stems! I feel like I have arrived at some higher CR plane now, even though I'm sure there's no evidence that JUST eating stems slows the process of biological aging.

Whatever floats your sugar-free jello, I suppose.

Posted by april at 12:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 10, 2005

Closing In On A High of 93

CR Increased Heat Tolerance

The radio says that we're closing in on a high of 93, and I'm loving it. CR has so increased my heat tolerance that I actually enjoy taking a walk to town when it is 93 degrees outside. It's been chilly all week and rainy, so I am enjoying our first hot sunny day in awhile. Don't worry, I am wearing sunscreen.

I hate to admit it, but I enjoy the heat even more because others hate it. It's not that I want my fellow humans to suffer... it's just that it's so cool to be untouched by the heat while everyone else is melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Still, I hope that it is cool when MR arrives. I do not wish his Canadian blood to boil during his first week in the States.

Today's blog entry, in case you can't tell, will be a hodgepodge of random observations, none of which merits an entire entry.

Don't Eat That

She's eaten Walford. She's eaten Kurzweil. She's eaten Ornish, McDougall, and the complete works of MR. She's eaten de Grey. Yes, she's my calico cat Philomena. And she has now figured out how to knock over my alarm clock, remove a book from a the stack of books, and eat a page. Delicious! Maybe I'll put a box next to my bed for my reading material. I can't have my cat waking MR up in the middle of the night by eating one of his articles.

Real Men Don't Eat Quiche: But They DO Eat Eggwhite Fritattas

Here it is:

1 cup eggwhites
1 cup non-fat plain yogurt
50 g tomatoes, sliced
25 g mushrooms, sliced
garlic powder
half salt
Italian spices, dried (rosemary, oregano, etc.)

mix the eggwhites and yogurt with a dash or two of garlic powder, salt, and spices. pour about half into a non-stick pie pan. throw in the mushrooms. pour the rest in. bake at 375 for twenty minutes, then take out and put the tomatoes on top. bake another twenty minutes. serve hot.

This is good. You can use other veggies if you want. Just be careful to add veggies that don't have a lot of water cause they will cause the thing to be runny.

What Did I Eat Today?

You may well ask as this is supposed to be a blog about what I eat every day.

Breakfast:
1 cup eggwhites scrambled
1 teaspoon flax oil

Lunch:
salad of romaine, tomatoes, green peppers, green olives, red onions, 1 cup cottage cheese, hot peppers, pickles, vinegar, fat free tomato basil dressing
10 hazelnuts

Dinner:
entire bag of broccoli, cauliflower and carrots drizzled with 1 teaspoon flax oil, 1 teaspoon olive oil, and two tablespoons brewers yeast (avoiding excess salt in broth as feeling like face is puffy.)
four teaspoons black bean soup, while perfecting soup recipe.
amount of black cherry seltzer/cranberry juice/red wine cocktail equivalent to 3 oz red wine, aka an MR pour.

Bad Planning on Your Part

Have you ever seen that sign that says "Bad planning on your part does not constitute a necessary emergency on my part?" Well, bad planning is the reason for 99% of slips from a CR diet, at least in my experience. When one walks out the door without one's lunch... when one ends up trapped in the office with no food and is hungry... etc. This week I have work meetings or events every evening, so I am planning for both lunches and dinners for all week. Luckily, my brewers yeast, cruciferous vegetables and broth soup can be thrown into a jar and microwaved at any time. Yogurts and hazelnuts are also convenient at times like these. Plan ahead and avoid the waste of calories and money!

Cleaning Out My Closet

No, not like M and M! I'm cleaning out my closets to get ready to move! I've found almost an entire new wardrobe of clothes I hadn't unpacked since my last move this time last year. Quite a few are too big and have been bagged up neatly to go to goodwill, but there are quite a few finds of clothes I wore the first time I got really thin right after college, and they look great! Also found a fantastic black sundress from my lowest Vermont weight, and I plan to wear it for an upcoming special occasion. The cat has crowned himself king of the mountain of boxes, and has very much enjoyed the closet cleaning out process.

Finding Oneself

I've had a weird two weeks of watching my friends go through identity crises. Maybe we're hitting that age. Anyway, one of my friends told me he was taking some time to find himself. I reflected that I'm so grateful that when I set out to find myself, I was exactly where I had left myself. Merely misplaced, I suppose.

Another friend just left a message on my voice mail indicating that he is planning to "hang it all up and become a minister." Okay. This calls for further investigation. I left a return voice mail message, and will keep you posted.

To Be Real

That seventies disco song that goes "To Be Real" and has no other intelligible lyrics has always been one of my favorites. Makes me think about my ongoing struggle to be a "real" CRONie (though I rather detest that term). I often feel that I am not CR'd enough... I look like a normal girl, I am not that hungry all that often, and to add insult to injury, my white blood cells are high normal. At least my cholesterol is really, really good. 134. HDL 73. MR says that's just fab. Well, that's what Aubrey de Grey would say, but MR says it's really, really good. Still, I feel like a loser cause my white blood cells aren't seeming all that CR'd. It's good to have room for improvement, I suppose. Gotta live long enough to get that car insurance money. And to get my phone company to admit that they cashed my last check. And to have lots of time to... you get the idea.

I Won't Be Serving Fish

The only downside to our amazing new house is that the landlord is in a touch of a dispute with the neighbors over a matter of sidewalk repair, and the neighbors appear to be a bit hostile. I suspect this because when I went to see the place for the first time, someone had shoved a dead fish under the door. Yes, a dead fish. I think it was frozen, cause it didn't smell, but still! How juvenille. I have some friends coming over next weekend for dinner. I won't be serving fish.

American Baby

I absolutely adore the new Dave Matthew Band song "American Baby." Have you heard it? I like it because a) it sounds cool b) it's by Dave Matthews c) I am an American and at least one person frequently refers to me as "baby." I tend to like songs that I feel like apply to me, and dislike songs that do not. For instance, I love the song "Saint Augustine in Hell" because I am rooting for Augustine's lover. I love all the songs by The Cars because I passionately identify with the woman who seems to be the main character in most of them. I dislike the song "Brown Eyed Girl" because a) it is annoying b) one of my close friends, Helen Fessenden, was forced to listen to it on continuous repeat for an entire night while her next door neighbor in the college dorm was using it to drown out other noise c) I do not have brown eyes. My college boyfriend Andrew, who weighed 118 at 5'10", used to change the words of all songs to make them conform to me. He sang that one, "Green Eyed Girl." We stayed together for two years, and parted amiably. He married a pediatrician from Harvard two days before Sept. 11. I attended the wedding and gave them a very expensive bottle of champagne and a very generous Victoria's Secret gift certificate. I am a good ex-girlfriend.

He Doesn't Like Raw Tomatoes

I know a couple where the man doesn't like raw tomatoes, but the woman does. He doesn't like cooked greens, but likes raw greens. She doesn't like mushrooms or onions. He doesn't eat seafood or red meat. I'm cooking for them in a week, as well as for a bunch of our other friends. I wonder if they like beets? Raddishes? Yams? Turnips?

I appreciate that they are forthcoming with their food preferences. I hate it when people say, "I like everything," because NO ONE likes everything. Even I do not like alfalfa sprouts. I think they have the texture of hair, and if I wanted hair on my salad I could just brush my own hair into my salad and save the money. Gross!

My mother married two people (sequentially, not simultaneously) who did not like tomato products of any kind. Not tomato sauce. Not pizza. Not lasagna. She is no longer married to either of them. Let those of you who have ears, hear. The kingdom of heaven is like a pasta-less lasagna. It has tomato sauce. It is harder for he who dislikes tomato sauce to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for an obese person to be comfortable in an airplane seat. Believe, and CR.

My mother does not like raw kale. Yet I am certain we are related. We look a lot alike and have a similar quirky sense of humor.

Wearing Orange

In my time travels through my closet, I found an old orange Ann Taylor skirt and blouse set. It's actually pretty, and looks nice with my hair. I am going to wear it. So for once, I will wear orange.

I am not orange yet, though my feet seem to acquire a blue tint from time to time. Might be hard, eventually, to match my toenail polish to it.

You Want a Recipe, Don't You?

Well, I gave you the eggwhite frittata! Aren't you happy with that? How about this berry parfait, submitted by MR's Mom, which is from Elizabeth's Blog:

CREAMY CHOCOLATE & BERRY PARFAIT

I like to divide this dessert into two or sometimes more servings; each one is just enough for a cool sweet satisfying way to finish a meal. To increase the fat, garnish with your favorite chopped nuts.

Ingredients (makes 2 servings):

1 cup plain nonfat yogurt
1 tbs. unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 cup unsweetened frozen blueberries
3/4 cup fresh raspberries
dash of grated nutmeg
1/8 tsp rum extract
Sucralose to taste

Mix the yogurt, sucralose, cocoa, nutmeg, and rum extract in a bowl. Stir until soft and creamy. Cover and refrigerate.

Puree the raspberries and one half of the frozen blueberries, then refrigerate for 15 minutes. Leave the other half of the blueberries in the freezer.

Using 2 parfait glasses or small glass dessert bowls: spoon a layer of the yogurt then a layer of the berry sauce into each dish, and keep alternating layers until used up, with yogurt as the top layer. Chill for another 15 minutes, then garnish with the remaining frozen blueberries. Optional garnishes: lemon zest, fresh mint leaves, almond slivers.

Total calories per serving: 130
Fat: 1 g (9%) (without the nuts)
Carbs: 23 g. (62%)
Fiber: 6 g.
Protein: 9 g. (29%)

Note from MR's Mom: MR & I found it needs 2 TBsp of cocoa powder, which will alter the crunch. Also, I have no sucralose, so used 2 TBsp Splenda.

Note from me: MR's mom does not actually call him MR. She calls him by his first name. But I have changed his name to protect his privacy.

My Mom Discovers Raw Fava Beans

She wrote this ode to them:

In Praise of Fava in Their Pods

I'm in love. Do you know how cute little
favas look in their pods? There they are nestled
in their snuggly pods still attached to the beanie
feeding tube. They pop out all shiny and new, ready to be soaked for
some good chili. What a wonder and joy to share in the gifts of nature.
Although I hesitate to ask, let me dare to ask what the nutrients are?
How many can I eat for dinner? Thanks for all our bloggie friends.

I Am Friends With A Celebrity Anorexic

Was cleaning out some old pictures and found some from high school. I went to Interlochen Arts Academy, where the teachers are crazy, the snow goes from November to May, and the kids are all on scholarship. I know I was. Everyone was a drama queen, and it didn't help that there were 60% girls, 40% boys, and of the boys remaining, about half were gay. So competition for a suitable boy to date was stiff to say the least. I used to sit in the study lounge and dream that someday a beautiful orange tinted man with bright blue eyes would appear out of a puff of smoke and take me away from all this. Anyway, I was pretty good friends with Marya, who wrote the book Wasted, which is something of an anorexic cult classic. I cried for days after reading it, both sad for Marya and feeling a lot of survivor's guilt that the anorexic monster never got me. I found a picture of Marya back in high school, reflected on what a pretty girl she was before the anorexia really got her. I hope she is better now. I pray for her, and for all of us, and I am allowed to do that because it's my religion and I'll pray if I want to.

Neat-o Mosquito

What a stupid phrase. What is so neat-o about a mosquito? I am all for the food chain and the circle of life and such, but I really prefer that other creatures only bite me if specifically requested to. Or if we're in the sort of relationship where the request is kind of a standing invitation. Like, help yourself to whatever's in the fridge. Bite me whenever you feel like it. That kind of thing.

So I'm pleased to see that another bizarre side-effect of CR is that the bugs no longer seem to want me. Now in the past, when I was much less secure about my own desirability, I might have been insulted by this development. But now I understand that mosquitoes are not the kinds of critters I want to attract, and I am just thrilled that out of a southern porch full of people wearing bug spray, I will be the only one who is not bitten, when not a driplet of OFF has touched my skin. Bug spray scares me and smells bad, so I avoid it. I don't even use Skin So Soft, though it does work as bug repellant. I don't need to, cause for whatever reason I am no longer attractive to our little biting friends.

Black Bean Soup

1 cup dry black beans, soaked, boiled and drained
1/2 cup of chicken broth (made from bullion or in a can or whatever)
1/2 cup salsa
2 tablespoons rice protein powder
1 pickled jalepeno

Mix the broth and beans. Stir in rice protein. Allow to cool a bit and add salsa. Garnish with jalepenos.

Yummy. You could even add some non-fat plain yogurt to get a creamy taste.

Enough already.

That's it. That's all. Go back to doing whatever you were doing.

Posted by april at 9:59 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

July 9, 2005

CR Is For Hedonists

[WARNING: Soft-skinned folks in the non-CR'd camp might find the content of this entry shocking or offensive. If you are under 18, a Puritan, squemish, or irrationally afraid of vegetables, please stop reading right here.]

A few days ago, a commenter posted to Brother Aaron's blog. I will reproduce it here. The potentially offensive language is the commenter's, not mine.

From my point of view, you might as well devote your life to serving god. The fundamental motivation behind your choices seems the same to me.

Hedonsim is where it's at.

Why do we need "separation from the rest of the animal kingdom"?

Thinking and F*ck*ng (etc) are not mutually exclusive!!! Finding balance is key. Is pondering the big picture really more *fun* for you? If so, maybe you should buy less books about philosophy and the universe, and more about how to have better sex.

If you turn to God as a way of life to deal with the death of your cat, is it really any different than turning to CRON as a way of life to deal with your high blood pressure? Do either of those choices really make your life any better? Or are you just trying to justify sacrifices required due to circumstance to yourself by concocting some higher purpose?

As a Hedonist, I *enjoy* humping and cheeseburgers and Fear Factor. I also enjoy riding my mountain bike or skating to excercise. And, on very rare occasions, I enjoy pondering Life, The Universe, and Everything. Then I go hump some more. Cuz it's what I *want*. Hedonism does *not* provide the answers I seek about Life and the universe, but you don't have those answers either, else you wouldn't have to ponder any more and you could go back to humping.

You can go on denying yourself. Though, I think your daily sacrifice is even worse than wasting every Sunday in church. Maybe on your death bed, for one nanosecond you will be able to admit the regret to yourself, and realize all the perfectly good humping time you missed out on. And I think there is regret, I think it's why you wrote this entry.

Well well well. I think it was in response to Aaron's original comment that:

Another motivation to do caloric restriction is that I am generally attracted to the ideal of overcoming primal urges. After all, that is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We have the same primal urges that all animals do; those powerful drives to eat, fuck, and sleep in ever more luxurious dens. Only humans can override these urges with higher-level urges generated by reasoning about the big picture. Every moment we spend eating and sleeping and humping and carrying on shallow lives shopping and watching Fear Factor, is a moment spent being an animal. Every moment spent meditating on the big picture, reasoning, and overriding primal urges, is a moment spent being human.

Now, I'm not saying we should all run off to Tibet and become monks (as much as I admire them -- those Tibetan monks are really in to being human), but it is just such a damned shame if we all waste our short lives running around sniffing each other's asses and drinking out of the toilet. Yes, my lovely readers, do yourselves a favor and please do not forget the big picture.

I'm glad that Aaron doesn't think we should run off to Tibet and become monks. I have it on good authority that if you do that, you have to drink yak butter tea, and that yak butter tea is really gross. (No offense to the yak lobby who will probably attack me for being anti-yak. I love yaks! Some of my best friends are yaks!) But I'd have to disagree with him in terms of motivation for doing CR. For me, a desire to master the primal urges plays no part in my motivation for CR'ing. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is because I intend to satisfy all my primal urges as efficiently as possible, as often as possible, and for as long as possible, that I do CR.

Does that seem contradictory to you? Well, let's unpack the commenter's comments a bit.

First, the part about sex. Now how does eating fewer calories mean less sex? I know the whole thing about CR = decreased libido, but Aaron wasn't talking about that at all! In fact, that aspect of CR is so over-emphasized that I think it's almost a myth. While CR'd men may experience a change in their feelings towards whatever sex they are attracted to, it doesn't usually equal a lack of interest in love and sex. I know this from extensive discussion with the brothers, who are unusually forthcoming about such topics, which just goes to prove the CR people will tell you anything. One of them, and I can't say who but it wasn't MR, told me that the whole CR = low libido was just a scam to convince women (this brother happens to be straight) that CR'd men are "safe," so that they'll have their guard down and be more easily seduced. I don't know if this is true or not, and no one else has broken the silence and admitted to the conspiracy, I'm just saying that's what I heard.

And as to function, well, HELLO!!! CR slows biological aging, and I'm sure some of my readers are aware of what happens to a great many non-CR'd men as they age. Desire may not decrease, but ability sure does. With CR'd men, not so! I'm thinking that at the next CR conference we should sell bumper stickers that say, "CR Guys Can Do It Forever." That should put an end to the snickering from the non-CR'd about one oft-cited side-effect.

How about this part:

If you turn to God as a way of life to deal with the death of your cat, is it really any different than turning to CRON as a way of life to deal with your high blood pressure? Do either of those choices really make your life any better?

Well, far be it for me to tell anyone how to deal with the death of a pet because I personally plan to take bereavement leave, cry for days, and wear black for a year if one of my cats ever dies. But as to turning to CRON to deal with high blood pressure or any other health issues that it may address, UH, YEAH. Of course it makes your life better! Who wants to be sick and feel bad, when you can be healthy and feel good? I hate to the be one to break it to you, but being unhealthy feels bad! And the medications that are prescribed to deal with illness frequently have side-effects that also feel bad! CRON has almost all positive side-effects. High blood pressure medication does not.

Now let's take the big one:

As a Hedonist, I *enjoy* humping and cheeseburgers and Fear Factor. I also enjoy riding my mountain bike or skating to excercise. And, on very rare occasions, I enjoy pondering Life, The Universe, and Everything. Then I go hump some more.

Now to some of you this might sound immature and tacky, but I'd have to say, my own philosophy is not so far off. I enjoy the pleasures of this life,